Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters! ~Hunt of the Headless Horseman~ Review

As the Japanese galgame industry keeps sliding downhill, more and more people have set their sights on Steam, looking to break into overseas markets. The first to take the plunge was probably WillPlus, with If My Heart Had Wings, but that game caught a ton of criticism, because to satisfy Steam’s review requirements and appeal to Western players, it got heavily cut and altered—lots of the porn was removed, and the story itself even ended up different from the original. That move got a ton of pushback and criticism from weeaboos; some people even made “restore the original” patches to make the game look less “sanitized.”

Oh, right—maybe some of you don’t know what a weeaboo is. According to the internet: “Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture.” In Chinese it’s even simpler: weeaboo = the otaku of the Western races.

These weeaboos are one of the main spending forces on Steam. Most importantly, their money looks a lot easier to make than that of Japanese otaku back home. You gotta understand, Western otaku don’t have time to natter on about story and this and that—as long as the girls look good, they’ll be shouting waifu. Remember that crazy melonpan on Twitter? That’s a standard-issue weeaboo right there.

WillPlus’s first step onto Steam might not have been all that successful, but it did make money, and it quickly attracted imitators. Aside from people translating Japanese galgames and putting them on sale, some bigger brands—Frontwing, whirlpool, etc.—even started making galgames built specifically for Steam, kind of like “platform exclusives.” Stuff like Corona Blossom, Neko-nin EX Heart, and the XXX Trigger series.

Calling them platform exclusives isn’t quite right, since these games do go on sale in Japan too—but the games these two studios make are obviously focused on the Steam platform. And honestly, taking these games back to the Japanese domestic market, they’d barely sell; Japanese otaku wouldn’t buy them either. The reason’s simple: they’re not hardcore enough—no porn, no grotesquerie—the content is entirely aimed at Western weeaboos.

Japanese devs seem to have a certain stereotype about Western weeaboos: they think the elements that attract those gaijin otaku are basically the following—pretty ninja girls, combat, maids, mysterious organizations, animal ears, school, a bit of yuri, school stuff…

So yet another game for weeaboos appeared: Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters! Hunt of the Headless Horseman.

The English name is way too fucking long. In Chinese it basically means Ninja Girl and the Urban Monster Army: Hunt for the Headless Horseman. The whole game isn’t long at all—about two hours and you’re done. There’s nothing to spoil, really: you just kill the Headless Horseman who shows up at the start. It feels like just the beginning of the story.

Still, I think there’s something to this game. For one, it hits pretty much every element I listed above as catnip for Western otaku; there isn’t even a male protagonist—just yuri. They also brought in 茉宮祈芹 for art and 渡辺遼一 for the script, so on paper at least, it’s at the level of a Japanese quasi-top-tier eroge. The CG quality here is better than that Tamayura Mirai 茉宮祈芹 worked on around the same time—the main girl in that game kept weirdly tilting her head, the coloring was off, and there weren’t many facial expressions. None of that here. Maybe they paid better.

As for the story: the main plot is short, but there’s a lot of idle chatter. A lot of the conversation contains detailed explanations of “Japanese culture” and “Chinese culture” (yes—probably because there’s a Chinese version). Ninja schools, Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Daoism—it gives plenty of interesting explanations. I think this stuff really helps European otaku understand Eastern culture a bit better—it’s a form of cultural export. There’s also some snark about Japanese otaku culture itself: why “Nordic maid outfits are popular in Japan,” why Japan closed its borders before the Meiji Restoration. And based on what I know of writer 渡辺遼一, he’s also smuggled in a lot of personal gripes about “Japanese dissatisfaction with America”—you can feel it through the dialogue, but there’s no proof. Of course, after all the Eastern-culture exposition, the villain—the Headless Horseman—gets barely any ink. They explain his origin briefly and then kill him…

Oh, and the game has built-in Chinese (Traditional). The translation is already better than 90% of Chinese fan-translation groups, but there are still some things to complain about. Especially translating “キルロイ” as “吉佬儿”—is that a joke or serious? And the “Rune” magic mentioned several times—I remember the Traditional Chinese World of Warcraft translation is “符文魔法,” not “露恩魔法,” right? Still, thanks to the translator for making Chinese a launch language for the game.

The game is mostly a straight line, but there are a few choices; pick wrong and you get a Bad End. It’s not hard—you’ll get through easily. There’s even an extra mini-theater after a Bad End, so they put some care into the details.

All in all, as a game positioned for Western weeaboos, it accomplishes its mission very well: pretty girls, ninjas, combat, a mysterious organization, animal ears, maids, Japanese-style dialogue and snark, and a ton of Eastern cultural elements. The dialogue actually has something to it—it’s not the boring moe-and-fanservice kind (yes, I’m talking about Neko-nin and Neko-nin). Worth a look; it’s pretty good.

At least this game was way better than I expected. And right now it’s just a prologue—it’s clearly meant to become a series. I just hope it doesn’t get more and more boring like a certain XXX Trigger.

There’s a lot more this game got me thinking about, but what I most want to say is the old refrain: the Japanese know how to sell galgames on Steam—they advertise their culture, they know what elements weeaboos are into, and they can even slip in other Eastern cultures alongside their own. Meanwhile, plenty of Chinese galgame devs are still copying Japan wholesale—even giving every character a Japanese name and hiring Japanese voice actors. Not that that’s wrong, but if you’re just imitating Japan completely, why wouldn’t everyone just play Japanese games instead? I’d like to see a little of our own stuff, y’know. Sigh.

Also posted on Steam https://steamcommunity.com/id/plumlis/recommended/1094930